Advice for the Adaptive Farmer

Advice for the Adaptive Farmer – Daniel Spiro

The days are growing longer and we are in the midst of the awakening of spring life from winter hibernation. For the Adaptive Farmer this constitutes the season of greatest transition, which is to say, the time to spend the hours of light working, the time to reassess and reinvigorate systems, the time to make adjustments, the time to adapt.

And so, with that in mind, what follows is some advice to the Adaptive Farmer:

Turn back before it’s too late!
Otherwise, know that you’re making a difficult commitment:
To be adaptive involves nothing less than practicing
with intention at the art of living – which is difficult
enough without farming – and to be a farmer
is to work intrepidly for a species – humanity –
whose rare showings of gratitude will not be enough to sustain you,
if that is what you need to be sustained.

Now then. If you’re still here,
make use of yourself!
You’ve been gifted the license to a purpose
and while you must first discover and then decide
for yourself the details of this purpose,
to hunt for this discovery, and to make decisions is to engage
in the freedom and privilege to reconstitute our world.
So whatever you conceive your purpose to be
use it to find peace with your god or gods,
and with the life of humanity that you serve,
and let it make you feel joy in that peace,
because the labor of adaptive farming is one of service,
and a life of service prevails only
when it is buttressed with joy
and leads you to be filled with peace
at the end of the long day.

Work when it’s time, and work hard!
But don’t confuse the quantity of your work
with its quality. Work smarter. Think and do,
and then repeat.
Make your systems like clay – firm but malleable –
and they will be your greatest tool.
To those who say “this work belongs to such-and-such”
whoever or whatever that may be –
“man’s work” or “woman’s work” or “Dave’s work” –
tell them that work completed well
does not distinguish between who or what did it,
and the glory of tasks is only ever increased
when it can be shared with others.
Trust in your progress and take pride in it,
but do not worship your accomplishments.
Satisfaction’s shell may be shiny,
but it is also brittle and hollow,
and placing yourself within it will make you susceptible
to those who wish to exploit your work;
those whose ambition is to gain power over you.

Correct course along the way, but remember:
There is no correct course that lives unchanging.
So pursue with gusto the opportunity to fail,
because this is what it is to take risks,
and risks illuminate the cracks of hidden doorways
that might otherwise be mistaken for hard walls,
and it is through these doorways that you will find
the breaths of reviving airs from worlds undiscovered or forgotten.
Keep your failures close,
surround yourself with them somewhere below the knees,
make them function like the dead leaves and sticks of the forest floor,
which circle the trunks of great redwoods,
sinking into miles of hidden roots,
providing essential nourishment in their decay.
In this way, small failures are amendments to your strength,
and they will steel you against the Big Failure,
which we might also call:
the rigidifying of adaptation,
or the great petrescence of living.

Search for beginnings!
In the story of life’s sustenance (which is your crop!)
there is no true knowledge of beginning or end.
Let this humble you and energize you.
Know that beginning again is not the same as beginning anew,
that a mistake repeated is still different the second time,
for a lesson learned twice is itself a new lesson.
Find comfort in this knowledge.
It is always possible to begin fresh.

As you are taking on a great service to human beings,
remember to cultivate your humanity.
You must match the steely resolve required of your will
with an equally open vulnerability in your heart.
Practice your compassion with livestock.
This will lead you to take thoughtful care of all life on the farm.
Learn to be generous in all your dealings with all the people –
no matter their creed, color, religion, economic bracket, political inclination or sexual preference –
for a farmer feeds all the people, not just those of “like-mind.”
Be with people as often as your energies and opportunities allow.
Celebrate with people. Mourn with people.
This is the only way to build community.
Let your community mold and prune you.
Contribute to the communal goal of being dynamic and kind.
Be aware that the core of a strong community is
the unique love experienced between humans,
and appreciate this love
for its entanglements, its complications, its extremes,
its holy mysteries.

Love the land – it is one of your parents,
and as a parent it will support, sustain,
challenge, and frustrate you by its own whims,
often without regard for your feelings or preferences.
There can be great heaviness
in the love between a parent and child;
this is how it has always been with the land,
the parent of our ancestors since time began.
Fill your heart with this heavy love sometimes when you work,
think of it when you hold the weight of the earth in your hands,
and when you notice the weight of your feet on the earth.

Finally, be like the noble peasant,
who’s daily mindfulness of the most minute details
opens into dreams and visions of a sublime future in the night.
Use the long days to enact these visions.
You are an Adaptive Farmer,
your job demands presence of body and mind,
and, on good days, it will reward this presence
with moments of elation and grace.
If you remember to be humble, to be honest, and to be patient,
you will find beauty glows unmistakably in the movement of everything.
So let adaptation heighten the experience of your becoming,
and farm to feed yourself and our world,
and if and when you become overwhelmed or bored,
take pride in remembering that you are engaged
in the greatest unending revolution of human history.
Strive to be thankful for it.